News and commentary about road pricing across the globe. Tolls, congestion charging, distance based charging, road user charging. Public policy, economics, technology and more. If Google brought you here, look down the right sidebar for references.

Saturday, 7 July 2012

Marxist position on tolling

For the weekend, I thought this article, apparently based on a Marxist view of economics (but I would not dare suggest it is a particularly authoritative one), would be a curiosity.

It is written by Irvin Jim, General Secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa. I wont bother rebutting the arguments made here, since they are well off my scale of having anything to do with economic efficiency, but are all about “from each according to his ability, from each according to his means”.

He advocates highly progressive income tax as a way to pay for roads. Draw your own conclusions of the logical consequences of such an approach on demand for road use and cross subsidies from those who use roads the least to those who use them, wear them out, congest them and pollute from them the most.

Subscribe To

Search This Blog

What is road pricing?

Road pricing is any system that directly charges motorists for the use of a road or network of roads. Traditionally it has meant tolls on single routes, particularly crossings such as bridges or tunnels. More recently it also includes area, cordon and zone pricing of urban areas, and distance and time based charging of whole networks. It does not include fuel or tyre taxes, or taxes on ownership or purchase of road vehicles.